Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One and Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Bertram is also the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

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Judi Fennell — Going with the Flow

November 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I have an exciting day ahead of me today. I am a guest on Judi Fennell’s blog talking about mermaids and mountains, and Judi is here talking about mermen and humor. Judi is the author of In Over Her Head, the newly-landed Wild Blue Under, and the soon-to-be-netted Catch of a Lifetime. As you will see in the following article, Judi writes fairy tales with a twist:

Thanks, Pat, for having me here today.

As some of you may know, I write a paranormal romance series about Mermen. Yes, Mermen. I figured if there were mermaids in stories, there had to be Mermen, right? Otherwise how would you get more little mermaids…

I didn’t really start out to write a series about Mermen, though. That’s the funny part. I was writing a series about modern twists on fairy tales: Cinda Bella, Beauty and The Best, and Fairest of Them All. For my story, I chose The Little Mermaid, and figured the best way to twist that was to make him the Mer. So I did, made the Human a female, stuck her under the sea, tossed in some stolen diamonds (literally tossed them into the sea), added a sucker-less remora fish named Chum, a mafioso-type great white named Vincent, the mother of all sea monsters (Ceto from Greek mythology), stirred in some other mythologies, a couple of pop cultural references, manipulated our language to be sea-appropriate, and voila, In Over Her Head was born, the title a play on so many things having to do with the story I don’t think I can remember all of them.

I had such a blast writing this story and laughed to myself the whole time.

The funny thing is, I hadn’t exactly been planning to write humor. It wasn’t until Chum showed up and opened his mouth, that I realized this could be a comedy. And once I made that realization, I figured, what the heck. Whatever pun or silly comment I came up with… in it went. That’s when the story started flowing. (And, yes, pun totally intended.)

Actually, there are a lot of puns in the story. On purpose. I mean, you can’t write a sea-themed story with a whole civilization and not play with the language. That’s it in a nut shell becomes That’s it in a conch shell. I think you might want to sit down becomes I think you might want to rest on the bottom, Son-of-a-bitch! becomes Son-of-a-Mer! and so on. There’s a line about Johnny Depp in there that got me my agent and readers have told me I hooked them (see? they just keep coming!) with the heroes’ names in the first two books – they’re twin brothers, one is the Heir to the throne, the other is The Spare, and their names are Rod and Reel. Yes, you are supposed to role your eyes, and go with the flow. Not quite campy, but the stories don’t take themselves too seriously.

Now, I’ve always had a wacky sense of humor that either gets some chuckles or some eye-rolling. Never would I have said that I’d be writing romantic comedy. I still scratch my head at that. Me? Funny? Hmmm… But, for whatever reason, it’s working for me, so you can bet I’ll keep swimming with it. Or, actually, in my next series about genies, I’ll keep flying with it. (Ah, to have a real magic carpet…)

Love all the fishy puns. And poor Chum. He’ll never live down that name. (And don’t let Plankton get ahold of him! – Yes, I love Spongebob… so sue me.) Are you continuing with the puns in the genie series, Judi, or is the humor of a different bent this time? Just curious.

Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One debunks many established beliefs about what grief is, explains how it affects those left behind, and shows how to adjust to a world that no longer contains the loved one. “It is exactly what folk need to read who are grieving.”(Leesa Heely Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator ).

Other books by Pat Bertram

Available online wherever books and ebooks are sold.

Grief: The Great Yearning is not a how-to but a how-done, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief. This is an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.

While sorting through her deceased husband’s effects, Amanda is shocked to discover a gun and the photo of an unknown girl who resembles their daughter. After dedicating her life to David and his vocation as a pastor, the evidence that her devout husband kept secrets devastates Amanda. But Amanda has secrets of her own. . .

When Pat’s adult dance classmates discover she is a published author, the women suggest she write a mystery featuring the studio and its aging students. One sweet older lady laughingly volunteers to be the victim, and the others offer suggestions to jazz up the story. Pat starts writing, and then . . . the murders begin.

Thirty-seven years after being abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Colorado, Becka Johnson returns to try to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? And why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen?

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents -- grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born -- she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead.

In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease, investigative reporter Greg Pullman risks everything to discover the truth: Who unleashed the deadly organism? And why?

Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in SE Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. At her new funeral, he sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on?